Herta Schmidt

Herta Schmidt (born May 16, 1900 in Hagen ; † December 1, 1992 in Braunfels ) was a German paleontologist .

She first studied biology with a minor in geology for teaching and then geology and paleontology in Freiburg, in Marburg (where she studied with Rudolf Wedekind ) and at the University of Frankfurt am Main , where she received her doctorate in 1937 with Rudolf Richter (on the morphology of the Rhynchonellids ). She was a long-time employee of Rudolf Richter at the Senckenberg Museum . Initially she was an assistant from 1936 and assistant from 1939. In 1960 she retired. Her retired scientific work was thrown back when she was run over by a motorcyclist on a zebra crossing in 1963 and suffered permanent damage that made it impossible for her to draw.

She was particularly concerned with the brachiopod order Rhynchonellida . Schmidt completed the trilobite volume of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (published in 1959), which was still incomplete due to the death of Emma and Rudolf Richter, and wrote the chapter on paleozoic rhynchonellids in the Brachiopod volume of the Treatise (1965) with Digby McLaren . In 1982 she published a souvenir volume for Richter.

In 1989 she became an honorary member of the Paleontological Society and received the Cretzschmar Medal.

From 1936 to 1960 she published Natur und Museum (the popular scientific monthly of the Senckenberg Society, until 1962 Natur und Volk).

Fonts

• The Flight of the Animals, Frankfurt am Main, W. Kramer 1960
• The Central Devonian Rhynchonellids of the Eifel, Abh. Senckenb. Naturf. Ges., Volume 459, 1941

literature

• Obituary in Paläontologische Zeitschrift, Volume 68, 1994, p. 283
• Wolfgang Struve in Nature and Museum, Volume 124, 1994, p. 1